


sins of the father (i broke all my bones that day i found you)

by ryter



Series: SBI characterization fics to cry about [2]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: 2020 L'Manberg Election on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Baby Floris | Fundy, Character Death, Depression, Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exile, Family Dynamics, Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Floris | Fundy Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, I Made Myself Cry, Moving On, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, War, Wilbur Soot Angst, Wilbur Soot is Floris | Fundy's Parent, ghost fundy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28269930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryter/pseuds/ryter
Summary: The thing that hurt Wilbur most was when he saw Fundy tear down the walls of L'Manburg. After all, those walls had gone up to protect his son. But in this world, Fundy trusts his father just a little bit more, and it ruins him.Or: there's only one way Wilbur never becomes the villain. It's unclear whether this was the better path.SOME VIOLENCE WARNINGS/BLOOD MENTION. CHARACTER DEATH. SO MUCH ANGST.
Relationships: Floris | Fundy & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: SBI characterization fics to cry about [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2084016
Comments: 66
Kudos: 390





	sins of the father (i broke all my bones that day i found you)

Phil liked to say Wilbur’s name suited him. After playground squabbles or melodies made up on the spot, he would shake his head or clap along, but he always said the same thing. It takes years to understand—but Wilbur means _brilliant._ It means _creative_ , means _clever_ , means _art_ , and that’s something Wilbur has always been good at. He and Techno, and even though Techno is smarter, Wilbur was always quicker to the punch.

But when Techno gets shouted at for his too-long teeth, or Tommy gets told to shut up, then he’s Will. He’s not as strong as Techno but he’s stronger than Tommy, and he uses his voice to shout abuse and spew insults sharper than any sword could ever be. Will means _protector,_ and that’s something he lives by as a brother.

It takes a Presidency to break both.

#

It starts on one of the days Wilbur takes scout duty. Usually it’s something he hoists off to Tommy, the gremlin child he is. Pogtopia is narrow for all that it is wide, and Tommy starts bouncing off the walls after a couple hours of pacing. But this night, Wilbur sets Tommy on iron duty and makes the rounds himself, needing the quiet and the air.

Three days had passed since their exile. The walls around L’Manburg (always L’Manburg, always) have long since been torn down. Tommy slept awfully that first night, still in shock, twitching and gasping next to the campfire. Wilbur made sure to spend that night awake, engraving every sound into his head. _This is why I’m fighting._

His little brother deserved more than Wilbur could give him, but for now, all he could do was wait and watch.

There’s a flicker of colour, out of the corner of his eyes. A mob, maybe, but his mind jumps to traitors, to Eret, to traps hidden in the night. “Who’s there?” he hisses out, turning sharply on his heels. “Come out! I can hear you!”

Nothing happens.

He steps forward, raising the torch higher. The weak flame beats back the shadow, pushing it above them and up to the night sky, orange fur scattered on the base of the trees. A strip of black fabric hangs limply in one paw, claws still outstretched. Black doesn’t get darker when it’s wet, but grass does.

Wilbur blacks out.

He wakes up with his tongue bleeding, voice cracking from the desperate screams. It doesn’t sound human, the way his wailing echoes off the trees and the ravines nearby. Tommy is behind him, torches placed down carefully, hands gripping onto Wilbur’s shoulder like a lifeline, voice loud in the night-time but sentences unrecognizable.

Wilbur’s own hands are twisted in black fabric, tacky with dried blood. There are no words he can use, but they come raining out anyway.

“Fundy,” he says, choking on it. “ _Fundy_ —”

The body stays silent.

#

Wilbur digs through the night. Tommy’s face is streaked with dirt, tears and snot, but he brings Wilbur buckets of water and clean clothes, white fabric more valuable than diamonds when they have no way of getting replacements.

 _Useless,_ Wilbur’s brain whispers, _waste of resources_. He takes them anyway, because none of it matters anymore until he can give his son this one last thing.

The bloody clothes get burnt. It takes Wilbur hours just to get a new shirt on Fundy’s body, hours of scrubbing fur and combing it through with damp fingers, but he keeps going. When the water gets too red to be used, Tommy is there with a fresh bucket, fingers chapping and blistering from constant mining.

 _You’re supposed to be the brother in control here,_ his brain says, and Wilbur lets it.

Fundy’s grave is perfectly level, all the way down. He carves stairs with painstaking precisions, carrying the body down in his arms, next to his heart. Fundy never liked being held in front of Wilbur—he would always jump onto his back instead, tail flicking around Wilbur’s bare throat, protective just as much as it was territorial.

But there’s no way of Fundy ever doing that again, so Wilbur shuts his mouth and cradles his son to his chest.

He makes sure the eyes are closed, the muzzle pointing upwards in stark defiance. There was no loot around the body—vanished, perhaps. Taken. It means the body is buried with nothing next to it, so Wilbur takes off his gloves and places them over Fundy’s heart before shovelling dirt.

He doesn’t look at Fundy while he covers the grave. It takes him ages, pulling puppet strings back together the best he can, a mess of tangled tragedies inside him. He wants to cry. He wants to be in the grave next to his son, or his son next to him. He gets neither.

Wilbur makes the gravestone out of obsidian, carving a pawprint into the black surface. Tommy leaves a bunch of flowers next to it, in perpetual danger of tipping over, and leans into Wilbur’s side. For once, Wilbur leans back, staring at the marker.

“What now?” he murmurs to Tommy. “What—what now?” _In control,_ his brain shrieks. _You should be in control._

“You eat,” Tommy answers. “And then you sleep. I can take care of Pogtopia for the night.”

 _You work too hard,_ he wants to say. _You’re supposed to be the little brother,_ he wants to tell him. _Shut the fuck up, you have no idea what this feels like—_

“Not hungry,” he says instead, legs folding underneath him. He rests his head against the cool obsidian, glassy surface rippling. “I’ll go back soon.”

“Will—”

“Please, Tommy.”

There’s a hesitation, a moment where nothing happens, where he can hear the cogs grinding away in Tommy’s head, but he leaves. Wilbur gets a few moments to be alone with his son, knowing no one can see his face, and his cheeks are still dry.

#

On Election Day, when Fundy clambered onto the podium with Niki, eyes bright in the sun and tales of running for President, Wilbur wasn’t mad. Proud, maybe, or concerned, but never mad. He’d be the first to admit he never took the running seriously, but at least a little bit of Fundy’s decision had to be because of his father, and that’s more than Wilbur ever asked for.

The anger came when his eyes moved from Fundy to Schlatt, lurking at the back of the podium, horns casting shadows over his eyes. Tubbo hid his own horns with bushy hair and messy styles, and all Wilbur could see was a father who failed to love his son.

Up on that podium, fighting for their futures, Wilbur has never understood Schlatt less.

(And afterwards, when Schlatt wins, when Wilbur is shoved away from his home and Tommy starts screaming—no one has to know, but he looks at Fundy and mouths _stay safe._ It’s the last thing he ever tells him.)

#

He does the math. At least ten stacks, preferably more, and the water canals will limit the explosion no matter how many stacks he has. So ten is the minimum, eleven for redundancy’s sake.

There’s no point in taking L’Manburg back. He built the walls around his once-little city for his once-little son, and now both were gone. The only person he could count on now was Dream, the enemy of his enemies, chaos for the sake of chaos. Wilbur’s ready to play the villain when he knows he’s in the right.

He’s almost starting to understand how Techno feels with his voices.

Wilbur takes one last turn around the ravine, and there it is. A tiny figure on the edge, almost ready to tip over. There’s no way anyone can survive that kind of fall, let alone someone as small as this, even if he has no idea who it is. He might be ready to become a villain, but not to that extent. He can save one life first.

He raises his voice in warning, walking forward carefully, ready to stop the person from falling. Then the figure turns around.

It’s too small to be Fundy. The fur is the wrong colour, dusty grey, ash instead of the flame. But it’s wearing one of Wilbur’s old shirts, rainbow colours combining to form a flat strip over the chest, and it’s lifting up two paws in the air, the same way Fundy used to as a kit.

 _Dad,_ it says, voice not reaching Wilbur physically but whispering in the back of his head, light and happy and dead. _Dad!_

Wilbur turns and runs, legs and lungs aching alike, desperate howls coming from the ghost behind him.

#

“Wilbur, you need to calm down.”

“That’s not my son,” Wilbur gasps out, fists clenched. He’s curled next to his bed, back against the wall and head in between his knees, hair in wild disarray. “Tommy, that’s not my son—”

“Damn it, Will, you’re gonna take off a life if you don’t calm down!”

“I can’t do this,” Wilbur says, and hates himself for it. “Tommy, I can’t.”

He had heard rumours before of ghosts, and had always brushed them off. Ghosts weren’t real and that didn’t change, no matter what kind of world you lived in. He had poured over plays and poetry, listened to men ranting mad over flickers in the night. A ghost was nothing your own mind turning against you, and if Wilbur had seen Fundy—

But he had seen Fundy. There were details he couldn’t have remembered, a voice softer than anything he could recreate.

His fingers tugged his curly locks of hair, the pain spiking through his head. There is a difference between wanting something to be real and knowing it is, and as long as he kept the door closed and kept himself locked away, the ghost would remain nothing but his mind breaking itself apart.

He can hear Tommy swallow hard. “But you gotta, big man,” he replies unsteadily. “Sometimes you gotta. We gotta get home and you—you gotta open the door. Whatever he is, he’s here. But I’m gonna be here when you do it.”

Wilbur slowly lifts his head. He remembers when Fundy first came home, how angry Tommy had been. There had been weeks where Wilbur danced around a crying kit and a rejected brother, made even worse when Techno decided to go on another fighting trip. It had taken Wilbur dousing Tommy in love and affection whenever possible to find a balance. He’d tiptoe around mentioning names in either presence, pull them both into hugs every morning and every night, but it wasn’t until Fundy had grown a bit older that they had really gotten along.

If Tommy is willing to go through this, Wilbur has to be.

There are spots in his vision and spots in Tommy’s voice, and spots inside himself he thinks he won’t ever get back. Wilbur knows how to be a son, and he knows how to be a brother. It’s being a father that’s been ripped out of his soul, memories staying where emotions still bleed out. But whatever is left of him is enough to open the door, and the ghost comes flying into Wilbur’s chest.

 _Dad!_ It’s still joyful, the past hour of crying already forgotten as the ghost nuzzles into Wilbur’s coat. _Dad!_

Wilbur carefully puts his arms around the ghost. His fingers almost pass through the figure, but they settle on too-soft fur. Next to them, Tommy lets out a heavy sigh, hand clenching tightly on his bow.

There’s not much left of any of them, but there’s this.

“Yeah, Fundy,” Wilbur whispers, throat tight. “Dad’s here. It’s all going to be okay.”

#

The ghost isn’t there all the time.

It’s the first thing they learn. When Fundy disappears from Wilbur’s arms, Tommy has to slam into them instead, letting Wilbur crumble into the hold. It’s another sleepless night for the both of them, two paths in a forest and them waiting for a sign. It takes hours for Fundy to materialize again.

Sometimes Fundy vanishes mid-word. The more corporal he is, the shorter he can stay visible. Hugging Wilbur lasts less than a minute and can take a whole day to recharge, or he can float around the ravine for hours without stopping.

It’s either through dread or suspense that Wilbur waits through for him to reappear, and Fundy always does.

The other thing they learn is Fundy can’t speak. There’s a few words he can repeat in his quavering way, in voices that come from the back of your mind instead of his mouth, but the only true sounds he can make are ones of foxes. The words he can say are limited— _Dad, this, please._

He tells Tommy _no_ once. It’s the first time Wilbur smiles since election day.

The last thing they learn is that Fundy can reappear wherever he wants. Sometimes it’s next to Tommy, sometimes it’s in the forest. On one memorable occasion, Tubbo comes pale-faced and with two carefully-penned messages—he wants to be a spy against Schlatt, and Niki spoils the ghost by tossing flour in the air whenever Fundy pops up in her little bakery.

Wilbur takes shaky breaths and goes to the grave whenever he gets a few moments alone. Something awful in his chest is sucking all the air out, his brain demanding retribution. _Back to where you have control._ He always takes a moment to look towards L’Manburg, but the shrieking never gets any louder.

Wilbur has always been one to love order, to love the control and the preciseness of a button. Efficiency over all.

There is no control after this. There is no point in trying.

On one of these days, Wilbur is still at the grave when Fundy pops into existence. The ghost always looks around, nose twitching, before he gazes up at Wilbur with pricked ears.

In the early days, the only way Wilbur could figure out what Fundy wanted was through his ears. His muzzle was too long for human words, tongue too long and teeth too sharp to speak more than growls and yips, but Wilbur could curl his fingers at the back of Fundy’s head and know everything in a matter of seconds.

Looking back down at Fundy, all Wilbur can think is _I used to know you,_ and the sentence curls around Wilbur’s brain and whispers disgust into his ears. He used to know everything about his son, and now all he has are faded memories of russet and rage, and ears that only ever push forward.

 _Dad,_ Fundy yips, tugging at the guitar on Wilbur’s back. _Dad, please!_

Wilbur slowly pulls the guitar off his shoulder. “You want—you want a song, buddy?” His voice is harsh, cracking on consonants, even as his fingers place themselves on the frets. Fundy nods his head, grinning in the way Wilbur had to teach him, when he had to explain teeth meant something different to humans.

He tunes the guitar, but he can’t strum right. His fingers shake too hard, and his voice is too loud, and there’s something breaking inside of his chest. He sings anyway, sings the way he used to sing when Fundy woke up crying in the middle of the night.

Fundy grew up too quickly. He wasn’t quite human enough to let Wilbur grow up before him, one year for father passing like five for the son. But for a while, Fundy was small enough to come to Wilbur when it got too dark or too cold. Wilbur would wake up to an orange mound of fur rising and falling steadily underneath his blankets.

Fundy’s transparent paws rest on the guitar now, letting the song vibrate through him. Wilbur keeps singing, the same few lines over and over, _here to protect you, whatever you need,_ watching the sun go down over obsidian blocks and already-sprouting flowers in the dirt.

#

Whenever Fundy’s ghost pops up next to Wilbur, Tommy starts to complain. It takes a few times for the pattern to fall into place, but Wilbur refuses to admit wanting to leave the ravine. When Tommy starts shouting over firewood, or water, or anything of the million things only found aboveground, it’s when Fundy shows up.

Wilbur will never thank his little brother, but Tommy would have never accepted it anyway.

So Fundy shows up, and Tommy starts griping, and Wilbur rolls his eyes but gets up gratefully and runs to the surface. Then he starts walking in whichever direction seems best at the time, Fundy popping through trees and chasing after birds. Sometimes, the ghost gets far away enough for colours to blur through the grass, and Wilbur can pretend for a few seconds.

It hurts more, when he pretends. He does it anyway.

On this night, they’re walking alongside the river. Wilbur has found a stick and is swinging it around like a cane, occasionally dangling one end just out of reach of Fundy’s claws. He’s yipping at the stick and there’s a strange kind of lightness in Wilbur’s chest, even though Fundy is close enough to see through.

There’s a rustle in the trees ahead of them. Wilbur drops the stick, hand pulling his sword out. With a yelp and a pop, Fundy vanishes.

His heart twists, but Wilbur keeps his gaze in front of him. A moment later, Dream steps out through the trunks, bright green glowing in the moonlight.

“I thought it was just a rumour,” Dream said first, words muffled by the mask. “Fundy really is haunting you.”

Wilbur’s fingers clench around the sword handle, but he doesn’t pull his weapon out. Straight to the point, as always. “You’re one of the only people who know about the SMP,” Wilbur says. “Right? You know how it works?”

“More or less.” He shifts in the dark, the tinkle of hidden glass bottles against each other.

Wilbur takes a deep breath. “How do ghosts work?”

There should have been a moment of shock, or at least of surprise, but Dream answers readily. “You don’t want to know.”

The laugh that rises from Wilbur’s throat is dark and bitter. “You’ve obviously never been a parent,” he says, and his voice is fluorescent acid in the night. “I have to know. Tell me.”

The mask was too white. It was one of those details that nudged its way into your mind, one of the little things Wilbur would realize in hindsight, when his brain wouldn’t let him sleep. The mask was freshly-cleaned.

“It’s a punishment,” Dream says. “And it has something to do with your last thought. That’s all I know.”

“Last thought?” Wilbur’s nails dug into the palm of his other hand.

Dream’s voice is slow and contemplative. “My best guess was he was thinking about outgrowing you.”

Distantly, Wilbur knows Dream is memorizing everything he does. Whatever Wilbur says now will be used against him, twisted to fit some new need, to be whispered into Schlatt’s ear, calculating as Wilbur falls apart in front of him. He still finds himself kneeling onto the ground, late fall leaves crunching into mud and mulch under his knees and his fingers twisting into the moss.

Fundy died alone in the dark, thinking about when he could go see his dad.

Wilbur’s skin cracks back, peeling, leaving nothing behind but the rawest edges of hurt. He keens into the air, fingernails digging into the dirt, forehead pressed against the grass. There’s too much sound, or not enough, but there are no right sounds in the world. His son is dead, truly dead, and he will never hear Fundy’s real voice again.

All the while, Dream stands in front of him, mask recording and TNT in his hands.

“Leave me alone,” Wilbur finally says, voice cracking. “I—leave me alone, Dream.”

“Schlatt needs to go down, Wilbur.”

He finds the strength to raise his head, glaring at Dream. “I don’t care anymore.”

“He killed Fundy.”

Wilbur is shaking his head before he’s even aware of it. “Don’t be stupid. I know Schlatt didn’t kill my son.”

“Oh?” Contempt laces Dream’s tone. “And you know who did?”

“I know because if Schlatt had killed Fundy, you would have told me at the start.” Wilbur raises slowly, balancing his weight on his fingers. “And I would have stopped at nothing to tear him and the entire world apart before killing myself, which is exactly what you want. You’re not a villain, Dream. You’re a prick who has no family to lose. Go home.”

Out of all the things he has ever said to Dream, somehow, this is the one that breaks through the armour and the mask. Next to him, Wilbur wears nothing but a coat. He is so open that it hurts to breathe, no layers up to protect him, but he is stronger than Dream can ever hope to be.

The TNT disappears. So does Dream, green vanishing into the tree trunks. Wilbur stays where he is, deep steady breaths grounding him. His palms are pressed against a sapling as he shuts his eyes and tries to remember how it felt to be angry.

#

Both in the beginning and in the end, Wilbur finds Fundy under the trees.

In the beginning, it’s because he’s ducked into the nearby forest with a guitar he traded a gold helmet for. He’s old enough to be alone for the day without Phil asking after him, almost old enough to move out, but not old enough to practice where Tommy or Techno could hear him make mistakes.

He keeps missing the strings or playing the wrong chords, and the machine heads are always too loose to tune properly. It’s a junk guitar, old and battered, and even when he’s ready to break it into pieces Will loves it more than he can say. Even when his voice cannot make a sound, his guitar can, and he manages to get one of the songs he’s been thinking about for _weeks_ down on paper.

He can do this. He can learn how to play this.

If he’s mid-word when the baby fox comes tumbling out of the trees, and if that word is screamed out at a pitch higher than humanly possible, nobody is close enough to ever find out. Except the kit, that is, who immediately falls on its back and starts laughing.

“No way,” he finally says. “No fucking way. That never happened.”

The kit keeps laughing, legs kicking in the air before jumping back up. It leans in, peering at the guitar, arms too short and legs too long to be on all fours. It’s bigger than a normal fox, fur dirty and tangled.

Wilbur lets out a slow breath, clicking in the back of his throat. “Hey,” he says. “Hey, you. Are you hungry?”

It lets out a pitiful whine, ears falling to each side and eyes widening. Wilbur doesn’t have much in his pockets, a banana and a single fish, but the kit snaps up the latter as if it were starving.

“I don’t have much more,” Wilbur says ruefully. “Where did you come from, little guy?”

It looks him straight in the eyes and gives him a shrug. Wilbur’s jaw is either on the floor or completely detached from the rest of his body, but it sets the kit off in another bout of laughter.

Now that he’s looking more closely, the back isn’t right either. It’s too straight, making the kit wobble on its back legs, and the tail is too bushy to be practical. The eyes face straight forward, jaw too rounded even with the muzzle. More than all of that, the kit is copying Wilbur’s stance, holding a stick in its paws and tuning the leaves.

“You’re not a real fox,” he breathes out. “You can’t be.”

It yips back at him, gnawing on the stick it found and looking up at Wilbur. The rush of emotions that rise up in his chest is a little bit like writing a song.

When the time comes, Wilbur doesn’t even have to bribe the kit. He stands up to leave, placing his guitar on his back and adjusting the strap over his chest. But when he stretches his arms out, already whistling and beckoning it closer, it jumps away from his hands.

Wilbur’s face falls. He’s already been imagining how he’ll explain this to Phil, but the kit is stepping back carefully and crouching to the ground.

“Do you want to come home with me?” Wilbur finally asks. It doesn’t hurt to try. “I’d—you’d be safe with me, I promise. I can give you more fish, and sing you songs. It’ll be okay, I promise.”

The kit sits down, cocking a head at Wilbur. It makes a chirruping noise, one that almost sounds like the chord Wilbur had been struggling with.

“Yeah,” Wilbur says, breathing the word out. “Look, here—I’ll sit down again, okay? I won’t even look at you. When you want to come, just come here. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

It repeats the chirruping noise as Wilbur slowly lowers himself back to the ground, back to the kit. He closes his eyes, waiting for soft fur to press against his hand or a cold nose against his cheek. Anything that will let the kit come closer.

When he feels light paws clamber upon his shoulder, he cannot stop smiling.

#

There is a maze of underground tunnels around Pogtopia. The last thing Wilbur expects to find in them is Schlatt, bloody eyes and smelling of spirits but completely, painfully sober.

“Hey,” Schlatt says, hands in his pockets. His breath is rancid, and his eyes flinch away from the torch in Wilbur’s hands. “Look, fuckface, you can calm down. I’m not gonna fight you.”

“I have an exiled brother who might say differently,” Wilbur responds, and the rush in his blood is the most alive he’s felt in months. He can visualize taking the torch and setting Schlatt on fire, stabbing the handle through his eyes. He can remember Dream’s quiet voice. _He killed Fundy. Schlatt needs to go down, Wilbur._

“I came here to talk to you,” Schlatt insists. “My inventory is empty. Nobody knows where I am. Quackity threw away all my alcohol, for fuck’s sake.”

“That’s very helpful, Schlatt. Thank you for your assistance in your own murder.”

Schlatt throws his hands up into the air. “Look, you dick, I know that you know about Tubbo.”

For a second, Wilbur’s vision goes white. All he can think about is Tubbo’s quavering voice, how hard he hugged Tommy goodbye every time he had to leave Pogtopia, the way Tubbo’s fingers always clenched bone-white in Tommy’s ripped shirt. There is a festival tomorrow, meant to celebrate _democracy,_ and Tubbo cries a little bit every day before he puts his suit on and no one can ever, ever know.

“I mean—” Schlatt leans against the wall, groaning and massaging his temples. “It’s not like his fucking horns are hidden anymore. They’ve grown right out of his hair.”

This should have calmed Wilbur. _He doesn’t know._ But all it does is turn the white to red, breaths caught in his chest, trinitrotoluene banging into his teeth. He tastes iron. He tastes soot.

“I just wanted to say it.” Schlatt looks right at Wilbur then, eyes dark and heavy. “I know a thing or two about not being able to reach your son.”

There is an unholy screech as Schlatt’s horns scrape against the stone walls, leaving thin lines in the cobble, as Wilbur’s hand grabs the labels on that _fucking_ suit jacket and slams him into the wall. Vaguely, he’s aware of the blood running through his bitten lip, his knuckles shaking against the fine black wool.

“You know nothing,” Wilbur spits out, and red drops on Schlatt’s pristine white shirt. “You gave him away—you made him wonder who left him on the street. He’s right next to you, every day, you could reach out and hug him and tell him the truth today if you wanted to. You’re just a fucking coward who plays on other people to get what he wants, doesn’t matter if it’s a city or a son, you sick bastard, my son is _dead—”_

And that’s the crux of it. Wilbur looks at Tubbo, and the storm underneath the layers of coat and clothes and skin roils away in black sympathy, because Tubbo is alive, and Fundy is not.

Schlatt drops his gaze. “You’re right,” he admits. “And for what it’s worth—I’m sorry for your loss.”

Wilbur lets Schlatt drop to the ground. His coat sleeve wipes over his face and comes back wet, blotchy in both red and clear. “You don’t get to tell me anything,” he keeps going, but the words don’t come out quite right.

When you sing, you have to sing from the diaphragm. If you sing from the lungs, the tone doesn’t come out as strong, it warbles instead of waves. Wilbur knows this, but there is a hole in his chest where his diaphragm once was and all that’s left is his aching lungs, wet cheeks, and a throat that’s too hoarse for lullabies.

“Come with me,” Schlatt says instead. “Back to Manburg.”

“So you can kill me?” Wilbur says, but there’s no bite in his words.

“Trust me, asshole. You’re too dead inside for me to want to kill you, and I’m too tired to try anything.” The worst part of this is how true it is—Schlatt has dark eyes and even darker eyebags underneath it, withdrawal and need making his hands shake and form claws in the dirt, but there’s nothing inside of Wilbur left to react to either. “I’m done, okay? So come with me, or don’t.”

Wilbur watches Schlatt pull himself back up, hobbling in the direction of what used to be home, and watches him disappear into the night. He wants to follow, but the only thing keeping Wilbur alive and sane is Tommy. In another world, where he goes mad from the lack of control, when the crown is being dangled in front of him like a toy, maybe Wilbur loses himself. In this one, pain keeps him rooted, and his little brother makes him wake up again and again and again.

The next morning, it will repeat. He’ll get woken up to Tommy shouting over news, of Schlatt’s entire party stepping down overnight. Tubbo is the new President of L’Manburg, and his first decree is to bring Wilbur and Tommy home.

His second is to make a portal to Fundy’s grave.

#

There is a point in time, when Fundy grows from a kit to a man, where he starts being _too big_ for things. He’s too big for his father to scratch him behind the ears, too big to rest on Wilbur’s shoulders, too big to creep into bed when he has a nightmare. He’s too big not to know about his mother.

It’s the last one that Fundy puts his paw down on. They’re next to one of the many rivers with fishing poles in hand, and Fundy has shot taller like a weed. His _too-big_ paws are still deft as they grasp the wooden pole, black claws sharp and slightly curved, but there’s a shaggy mane around his neck and he trips over his own legs. Awkward in life and in spirit, but he turns to Wilbur and says, “I want to know about Mom.”

The horrible part of being a parent is knowing when the truth is too much. Tubbo walks around with Tommy, the weight of the sky on his shoulders, apologies always ready at the back of his head. All Tubbo knows is he was left in a box with a blanket and a bee plushie, and it kills him in ways he cannot explain or ever get rid of.

Looking at Fundy, Wilbur knows he will never tell the truth. The monster in his chest that yowls for control purrs in contentment.

“Sally was a shapeshifter,” he said instead. “I—I don’t know much about why she had to leave, but I know there was no way around it. I guess she stayed human for too long. I just know she was amazing, and she loved you. She loved us both, so much, and I miss her more every day I’m alive.”

“If she loved us, she should have stayed,” Fundy argues, messing with the pole. He’s scaring away all the fish, but it doesn’t matter, not when his son’s ears are flat against his head. “She should have come back."

Wilbur drops his pole and drags his son closer, ignoring the half-hearted whine before Fundy buries his face in his father’s neck. “She does,” Wilbur insists, eyes stinging. “I promise you, she does.”

“You shouldn’t love someone who just leaves like that.” Fundy’s voice is muffled, tiny from his place underneath Wilbur’s chin.

“I shouldn’t,” Wilbur agrees. If he cannot give his son the truth, he can at least teach how to be defiantly wrong. “But she left you with me, and I love her all the more for it.”

They go home empty-handed. They go home filled with more than they can say.

#

Words change. Language changes, and people change with it. _A tragedy,_ people whisper behind him. _Too strong, too quickly, too late._ Wilbur means _too much_ , now, means placing everything you have on your heart and shouting at the walls when you get nothing back. In some part of him, he knew that Will used to mean _father,_ mean _brother,_ mean _son_.

Choose two out of three to keep, the world tells him. He keeps turning the strings on his guitar, twisting tighter and tighter, the wooden neck crying out. On his darkest nights, he imagines slipping one of the strings around his own neck, twisting and twisting until there was nothing left of him.

They are back in L’Manburg, and Tommy has his own life, but he still comes to wake Wilbur up each morning. The guitar breaks in Wilbur’s hands, or maybe Wilbur’s hands break it. In either case, he’s left with shards and splinters and a ghost that calls him _dad_ , and he’s not sure which one hurts the most.

But in both worlds, Phil comes back home to watch Wilbur self-destruct. It was always going to be in L’Manburg, be it an underground bunker or Wilbur’s little house. It’s just in this one, when Wilbur opens his door to Phil’s tired face, wings dragging on the floor, his first thought is not _so this is it._ His first thought is _I could never put this grief on any father._

Wilbur keeps the door open. He’s too old to cry, too sharp inside to let himself loose, but his father will make them both tea with a practiced hand and let a wing drift over Wilbur’s back, as if it was in passing.

#

The first thing Wilbur and the kit had done together was go for a bath. It had taken so long for Wilbur to comb through all the fur, picking out thistles and knots with the lightest touch he could manage, but the kit had relaxed into his hands after the first few minutes. Drying was the same, the kit nuzzling Wilbur’s arms as the towel went around him, and Wilbur is positive a bit of his heart had been left on the bathroom floor.

“Hang on—here, let me—”

It takes some struggling, but Wilbur eventually pulls the shirt over the kit’s head. It’s one of Wilbur’s old shirts from when he was younger, rainbow strips over the chest—the first thing he was able to find in storage. It’s too long in the chest and too small around the shoulders, lines arching where they should be laying flat, but the kit is yipping in joy and rolling on Wilbur’s unmade bed.

“Hey,” he protests, plucking the kit out of the blankets even as he bites back a smile, lightly digging his fingertips into the thick fur to tickle. “You’re ruining my bed! I’m warning you now, you won’t like me mad.”

The kit laughs so hard he almost falls to the floor, and Wilbur’s smile finally breaks through. “You’re a little ball of fun, aren’t you?”

The kit growls back at him, teeth bared in playful challenge and ears pricked forward. Wilbur makes sure to hide his own teeth, reaching out and resting a palm behind the ears, scratching gently. “Fun,” Wilbur repeats, and he’s already half-fallen in love with the sounds and the little paws and the way the kit yawns to reveal a lolling tongue. “Fundy.”

Fundy drags himself up to Wilbur’s shoulder, curling a bushy tail around his throat and stretching out on his back to lie down. Wilbur keeps his hand right where it is, combing gently through fur, until Fundy falls fast asleep.

#

The ghost of his son floats nearby more often than not, squealing at bugs and stars and loud noises. Some days, Wilbur can look at the ghost and almost feel normal about it. He still mourns over the adult his son had once been, but the memories were just as painful as the ashy figure above him. He can live through both.

Phil comes more often. He’s never been as good of a father as Phil was, all absence aside, but he tried. Phil has a way with silence that heals more than it hurts, letting Fundy bounce through walls and letting Wilbur look out the window over hot tea. It sticks to their teeth and they ride through the hot waves together, and in the darkest nights, he’s there to hold a hand out against the storm.

When it gets too hard, Tommy is there to play with Fundy. When Tommy isn’t there, Niki is. Fundy is allowed on the podium with Tubbo and tussles with Techno, delighting in having someone understand his growls.

Dream avoids them all. Wilbur does not have the energy to wonder why yet.

Sometimes Wilbur catches stray tears on his cheeks. Other days, he catches the barest curve of a smile on his lips. Both are brought about by his son, and he misses Fundy terribly, more awfully than he can say, misses him like a fire misses wood when it has died down to the bare ashes. But there is more in this world than moving on, and this is what happens in between.

L’Manburg is too big for him now, too much happening for him to leave his house, but he’ll get there eventually. When he does, there’s fresh bread for him in the mornings and tea waiting with his father. There will be new songs to play to his brothers and fights to lose, and a home to come back to. And when his heart has healed enough, Tommy will come to Wilbur with a seat in the court of foreign law, a chair in the new council as an advisor.

Wilbur will never be President again, not in name. Instead, he will welcome strangers into a L’Manburg without walls and know each citizen by name. He will whisper into Tubbo’s ears as President and Tommy’s as Vice President and be listened to, not as an advisor but as a father, as a brother, as a son.

And maybe, one day, all his ghosts will fade away. Maybe Schlatt will come back, or Dream will try something new, or Tommy will blow something up and have to face the consequences, but Wilbur’s name has always suited him perfectly. When the time comes for him to be Will again—well. He will.

**Author's Note:**

> This work focuses on the characters within the Dream SMP roleplay and not the content creators themselves.
> 
> ONE FIC, I SAID. IT WAS JUST A LITTLE IDEA. IT'LL ONLY BE A DRABBLE. AND NOW ALMOST 7K WORDS LATER I AM HERE AND MY HEART HURTS. FEEL MY PAIN.  
> This is not as literary as I normally write it, so it's definitely a bit of a twist on my style but I decided to post anyway! I'm really pleased with it, even though it was literally painful to write, so thanks for reading!


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